After a lengthy delay due to work being so busy these days (what with deep space missions and all), I finally got the chance to work on the poster for another of Stuart Atkinson's brilliant poems.This one he wrote not long after Opportunity's arrival at Endeavour Crater and her driving up on to Cape York.He really captures the 'spirit' of the exploration that has taken place during her long journey.

I hope you all enjoy his work as much as I had fun creating a background for it.

Compared to almost-silent Opportunity, Bunnell rode to his revelation in a cacophonyOf sound. With his war horse heavingAnd sweating beneath him, exhausted after their climb, Surely the surgeon heard his pioneer’s heart pounding;His mount’s bellowing lungs a’huffing;The sagging, rain-drenched leaves of the trees On all sides sighing as he passed by; And as he gulped in sharp, pine tar-coated Air, far away, hidden beyond a hundred horizons,The peaty waters of distant rivers, brooks and streams, Tinkling…

With trembling fingers combing throughHis bird’s nest of a beard as he neared The End Of All That He Had Known Before, Did he stop, look over the edge and,Bewildered by his first glimpse of thatViolently beautiful vista, refuse to believe Nature was capable of such deceit,Hiding such a heaven away?

Imagine – that very first view of a New WorldOf wide-screen wonder!Hard not to feel so small when facedWith such a fairyland of geology;Easy to believe that, in the days after Terra’sBawling birth, God’s own hands Reached down from heaven, dug deep into the Land and wrenched it apart,Leaving an impossible canyon behind,Middle Earth brought to life before Tolkien Had even imagined it: great, granite monoliths Looming over a valley carpeted with forests That splashed up against the mountains’ feet Like Nature’s own tsunami,All dwarfed by a preposterously-blue skyPainted with clouds so perfect Constable would have cried.

With startled eyes wide as a Full Sierra MoonHow long did he swoon over that first view of Yosemite?

Today’s Bunnell has treads instead of booted feet; It leaves no hoof- or footprints behind, But twin vapour trails of dust and wheel-crushed rock. Thus a crazy Mason-Dixon line has been laid across MeridianiBy Opportunity, meandering from Eagle Crater to, Around and then past Victoria as she advanced relentlessly on Cape York. Her sky is a cathedral dome painted pastel shades of orange, goldAnd tan; all hints, all hopes of blue are banned,Allowed to shine only for a while at dusk or dawnBefore fading out of sight. And after each frigid rose petal-freezing night the SunWhich rises from behind the eastern hillsIs just a cold, copper-coloured coinSurrounded by a coffee cup stain halo,Half-hearted rainbow sundogs shining on either side.

This is no lush Yosemite. No soul-stirring symphony of LifePlays here; this landscape is hushed, silent. The only sounds carried on the whispering wind Are the popping of rocks beneath her wheels;The occasional faint hiss of dust wafting Over the sterile, fine-thick ground;The tired, wheezing whine of her gears.

For the past hundred sols she has watched the skyline riseAnd fall like an ocean tide, in turn hiding And revealing just a little more of the humpback hillsThat have called to her since she crawled around Victoria.Now, she rolls serenely to a stop,Impatient for the view as her horizon suddenly dropsAway like a magician’s velvet cloak, revealing… Wonder!

Revealing -

Endeavour.

For endless, F5-filled months we have watched all Endeavour grow,Always thinking “Will we..?”Always wondering, “Can she..?”Now we are here. We have arrived. Without a trumpet blare, without most mortals even caringYestersol Opportunity made Landfall at Cape York,Rolling to and then slowly up Spirit Point,Impossible Journey complete, disbelief conquered.To her right: Endeavour’s once-meek eastern hills are mountains now,And even dimmed by distance Opportunity can seeA dozen different craters carved into their cliffs,The Future’s Mars’s Mt Rushmore.And dominating all – The Crater With No Name,That great Barsoomian bear paw-print clawed into the rock,Sauron’s Eye were Meridiani Mordor…Behind: the Tribulation Range traces out its gentlySweeping curve, a half-buried backboneOf age-decayed Points and Capes, forever out of reach.

And all around her now: broken boulders, rocks And stones surrounding the open pit of Odyssey, allBlown out of the ground when the crater was madeMillennia ago. Every geologist seeing these scenes On their flickering Post It note bordered screenIs cursing fate that they were not born a century later;Imagining they were bounding aroundThis Noachian Narnia, stopping beside each mineralogicalMarvel, bending down to lovingly run theirFat, gloved hands across its ancient sides,Sighing at the sight of flaking layers and platesMere inches from their face.What delicious torture they must be going through…

One distant sol Mars-born children will play here,Giddily chasing each other around these rugged rocksWhile their parents stand in silence nearby.Hushed; gloved fingertips touching tenderly;Quietly celebrating completing The Opportunity TrailBefore taking cheesy family pictures Of each other, standing beside Ridout or sittingIn a line on the dusty flight-deck of the great basalt Battleship “USS Tisdale 2”, shielding their tired eyes From the midday Sun to look for the diamond dust-Coated statue of the rover standing high On Tribulation’s side…

Look closely at the Navcam portraits of this placeWhile you gaze at that strange, snake-like seam shiningOn the ground just past Oppy’s feet andOut the corner of your eye phantom figures will appear:Here, the ghost of John Muir, leaningOn his gnarled wizard staff, drinking in the view;There: Ansel Adams’ spirit, his wilderness-tanned handsResting on his camera, waiting for just the right dusky, Dust-soft light… And ahead, standing on Endeavour’s very edge: Bierstadt, half-blinded by the beauty of the scene,Eyes closed, day-dreaming of the landscapes he will paintOf this noble, golden place…

If Opportunity ends her days here, that would be a life well lived.But who’s to say that one day, When she has grown weary of Cape York’s clods of clay,And scaled Tribulation’s tightrope heightsShe won’t just roll down the crater’s stadium wallsAnd set her sights on those asteroid-blasted farside hills?Would anyone really be surprised?

It's very important that people seeing this realise that it takes Astro0 a *lot* longer illustrating these poemsters than it takes me to write the words, and it's his hard work - especially when he's so bang-head-against-door busy - that brings these things to life. Without the pictures these are just me blathering on, bringing the rovers... rover, now... to life, which some people "get", many people hate, but at the end of it all it's just the two of us trying to bring something new to this incredible adventure we're all enjoying.

Befitting the theme of 'Endeavour Revealed' is today's release of the official movie of Opportunity's epic voyage from Victoria Crater to Endeavour Crater.Three years (so many sols) of expert driving and incredible science captured in a movie - I believe inspired by driver Paolo Belutta - and now available for us to sit back and relive all of our backseat driver experiences.

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